“She was pregnant.”

Blair looked at me. “What?”

“My ex, Kayla. She got pregnant right before I left for my final deployment. But I didn’t know until I was already gone.”

Silence. “Oh.”

“I was terrified, but fear was something a guy like me couldn’t admit. Couldn’t talk about. I’d grown up believing a man should be tough. I’d joined the Marines because they were the most badass. I’d been trained to be a killer ruled by self-discipline, and I was fucking good at it. I didn’t feel qualified to be a father yet, to raise a child. Not to mention there was a chance my kid wouldn’t ever know his dad. I knew plenty of guys tougher than me who didn’t come home.”

Blair turned toward me slightly.

“But then, as it sank in over the next few weeks, I started to get really excited about it. The idea of this innocent little being who would need me to protect him or her. I pictured all the stuff I’d done with my dad—playing catch, building a treehouse, restoring an old car. Imagining the life ahead of me got me through my worst days.”

“So what happened?” she whispered. “Where’s the baby now?”

“She had a miscarriage.”

“Oh.” She reached over and briefly touched my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“I was shocked at the way the loss fucking gutted me. But again, I couldn’t talk to anyone about it.”

“You never told anybody?”

“No. There was no one to tell. The guys in my unit didn’t talk about their fucking feelings. We were busy trying to keep each other alive.”

“What about your family?”

“They never knew either. Kayla had made me promise not to say anything, because she hadn’t told her family yet. They were strict and old-fashioned, the kind of people who would have judged us harshly.”

“That must have been hard for her,” Blair said softly. “For both of you.”

I ran a hand over my hair. “The worst came later. She blamed me for losing the baby. She accused me of not wanting it. She said it was the stress of having to deal with the pregnancy on her own that caused the loss. She said if I hadn’t re-enlisted, we’d have been married already, and she’d have been able to carry the baby to term. She said it was my fault.”

Blair gasped. “Griffin, you know that’s not true.”

“I used to think it wasn’t. But then I started to believe it. You hear a thing enough times, it starts to feel real.”

She touched my shoulder again. “It wasn’t.”

“When I got home, I tried everything I could to make things right, to keep my promises. I just wanted to be able to fucking fix things, but I couldn’t. The damage was done. She finally told me she’d fallen for someone else while I’d been away, someone who’d been there for her when I wasn’t.”

“Griffin, she was hurt and angry. She wanted to punish you.”

“It worked. I was a fucking wreck of a human being until my dad and my friends sat me down and told me to quit being mad at the world because things didn’t go the way I’d planned. And I get it. Life is unpredictable, and shit happens. But I never wanted to be in that place again, so that’s why I have all the rules.”

“To protect yourself?”

“To protect everyone.” I stood up, grabbed my boxer briefs from the floor and pulled them on.

“But . . . what if the rules are keeping you from moving on? What if they keep you from being happy?”

“The rules keep me from making mistakes,” I said, standing as tall as I could, shoulders back. Walls in place. “At least, they’re supposed to.”

She wrapped her arms around herself again. “What does that mean?”

“It means what we just did was stupid and reckless.”

“Is that all?”

I forced myself to say the words. “And it means we need to stop screwing around with each other. Enough is enough.”

“Screwing around with each other?” Her mouth hung open. “Is that all this is to you?”

“What else would it be?”

“I don’t know, Griffin. I guess I kind of thought we had something special.”

“Well, you were wrong.”

Her eyes shone with tears that threatened to pierce my resolve. “Where is this coming from? One minute you’re apologizing for being a dick and opening up about this traumatic thing from your past, and the next minute, you double down on asshole. I have whiplash.”

I shrugged, tripling down. “I never made you any promises.”

“I never asked for one!”

“But you would have,” I said bitterly. “It was only a matter of time.”

“The only thing I was going to ask was to keep seeing you.” The tears dripped from her eyes, and she angrily swiped at them.

“No. When you leave, this is over.”

“Why? We’re good together, Griffin. At least we were up until five minutes ago.”

“And then what?” I asked, growing agitated, because I didn’t know how to make her understand. “We keep seeing each other, and then what?”

“I don’t know! We just see where it goes.”

“But there’s a limit, Blair. There’s a limit to how far we can take this. We don’t want the same things.” I pointed at her. “You want a fairy tale, and I’m no prince.”

“That’s not true!”

“Yes, it is. Your ten-year plan doesn’t look anything like mine.”

“But things could change,” she wept. “Couldn’t they?”

“No.” I started pacing at the foot of the bed. “See, this is why I have the rules. And if I would have fucking stuck to them and kept my hands to myself, this wouldn’t be happening.”

“But you created those rules for yourself when you were hurting—you needed to heal before you could move on.”

“I needed to be real about what I was capable of,” I said harshly, turning to face her. “And you do too.”

She shrank back almost as if I’d slapped her. “So it really was just about the sex for you?”

I looked down at her crying on the bed, and my hands clenched into fists. My arms ached to hold her. But all that would do was postpone the inevitable. “Yes,” I lied, knowing I’d never forgive myself for hurting her this way. “You were right all along. I was lonely, and you were here—I took advantage of it, and I’m sorry.”

“Liar!” she cried, jumping to her feet. “You’re not sorry! All your apologies are lies. I thought you were different, but you’re just like everyone else. I never should have trusted you.”

Her words cut me to the bone. She was right—I was a liar, but not in the way she thought.

And I didn’t have money or fame or status, but I had honor, and it killed me to let her think otherwise. But before I could defend myself—if it was even possible—she raced out of the bedroom and yanked the door shut behind her.

With a heavy sadness I hadn’t felt since losing my dad, I sank down onto the bed, head in my hands.

I was alone again.

But it felt terrible.